where is my flying car, dammit?

well, it looks like once a week is the best you're going to get. i hate blogger so much i've quit posting. what i really, desperately want is for someone to design me a damn site and set up Wordpress so i don't have to think about it. dammit. i used to be good at these things. i remember when it was so simple...entries, archives, a bio. now i have to deal with things i don't understand. what is RSS and why should i care about it?

Mom's visit came and went, and there was much fun and rain to be had. after weeks and weeks of non-stop sunshine, the five days she was here it didn't even make an appearance. We did dumb tourist things and she did all the things she always does when she visits me - gives me money and buys me food and clothing. Hello age 25.

we had a semi-creepy experience at the Johnson Space Center. it hadn't processed in my brain that going to NASA on a Saturday during a time when no shuttles were in space would result in the "campus" (as they call it) being rather dead. campus was an appropriate name for it, because it had all the architectural charm of a midwestern state university built in the early 80s. there was almost no one there, i guess it was just bare bones crew that remained. we rode around on this strange little tram, and it freezing fucking cold, and there almost nothing to see. mission control was eeriely quiet, like a carefully dressed but as yet unused stage set.

i did end up take a good amount of pictures, because i have an incurable interest in quiet, deserted places. i prefer the things people leave behind to the people themselves: chairs left askew, papers spread across a desk, a half empty coffee cup. it was like the NASA time forgot.

all of these were taken looking down onto the astronaut simulation training area.













the touristy "Space Center Houston" part of the whole gig was mostly geared toward kids: large climbing jungle gyms, overpriced bad food and overpriced cheesy souvenirs. and of course the tear-jerking, lump-in-the-throat-inducing rah-rah documentary films about the space program that, despite my deeply ingrained cynicism, had me welling up at times.

i have this thing for space travel, see, not in any real, technological or scientific way, but more in the "slipped the surly bonds of earth" kind of way. it's something mysterious and highly romantic for me, something i can't really explain easily. i just get really weirdly emotional. when John Glenn went back into space during my senior year of high school, i watched it on TV in Advanced Biology class and had to do everything i could to not cry. and one summer, many moons ago (har har), my sister and i watched Apollo 13 every day. for weeks.

i think this probably all goes back to Star Trek, and my innate indignation at the fact that no one has invented warp drive yet and i still haven't met any Vulcans.

well, duh.

there's been a burn ban in this part of Texas for the last few weeks, and if i had a guess, i'd say it's probably been lifted by now, because last night was the most insane, torrential rain that i've seen since i've been in Texas.

i was settled down last night in bed and kind of combing through an old New York Times (contemplating my love-hate relationship with the Sunday Styles section), but i heard a soft drip. actually, i should say saw a soft drip, because a stream of water landing on carpet doesn't make any sound. yes, a stream of water coming out of the edge of my ceiling. i positioned a wastebasket under it, only then to find about four more leaks, including one directly over my bed. oh joy.

i called Mark, who called the landlord, who came over, followed by his four year old son, to inspect the problem. so it will be fixed today, and last night i spent the night on the notoriously comfortable couch (as Mark calls it). Mark made spicy popcorn and fed me dark chocolate that tasted of cherries, and we watched CSI and kept a running commentary about how lame it was.

so me mum is coming down to Tehas on Thursday. i had been musing only a few weeks earlier how sad it would be that she would never get to see my digs in Texas, but she had a flight voucher (left over from when American Airlines nearly killed me and my father last summer), and so she is coming here, with plans to knock out at least a couple of things on my Texas to-do list. i think the Basquiat show is in the plans, as well as going to Austin for a day, and doing dumb tourist things at NASA. i want some space ice cream. because i like eating things that are like Astroturf.

i'm also having a little opening/reception for the work i did over the last six months. things are not near done and yet i find myself oddly unstressed about it. maybe i learned my lesson from my thesis show and my body decided that nervous breakdown was not the most favorable path. at any rate, things will get done tomorrow, and i think they'll be pretty okay.

i am sure of a couple things, though:

i think i am done with clay.

i know i am not stretching myself anywhere near enough in my work.

i feel somewhat disappointed by what i didn't do during this residency, but not disappointed in a bitter way. i guess i am excited by the possibilites, and the knowledge that i can and will make work after this residency is over, and it'll be good, probably better than the stuff i'm making now. i don't know exactly why i'm still torturing myself with porcelain, because buidling with it and babysitting it (as it must be) no longer has the slightest pleasure for me. maybe that's why i spent so much time fucking around on the internet in my studio: to avoid what i no longer like.

ah well. time to start over.

someday i'll tell you all the whole story.

i hate decisions.

in the space of two weeks, i have went from:

staying in Houston, getting a roommate to

staying in Houston, living alone on the cheap and finding another job to

moving home to Lebanon, working at a St*rbucks in Harrisburg and paying off my car to

moving back to Phiadelphia on the prospect of a teaching job and finding an affordable apartment in Germantown near Jeanine so i can see her any damn time i want. even when i lived in East Oak Lane, 15 minutes was too far.

so goodbye, then, to Houston, to Texas, i hardly knew ye. i think i am leaving late February or early March, never to return again, or at least not a long, long time. i can't imagine what would bring me back to this strange glittering city of white freeways and dirty little ramshackle houses. all the more easy to leave, because the girl (the woman) who i thought was my friend turned out to be a fucking sociopath. all the more easy to leave, since the Boy i thought i just might be falling for left me alone in the strangest of circumstances, circumstances that, now that the hurt has passed, i can look on and say: what the fuck?

telling all your friends "it's his loss" and for the first time in your life actually meaning it: priceless.

listing.

nine things to do before i leave Texas:

1. go to NASA and do dumb tourist things.
2. walk around the third ward and take pictures.
3. see another crazy hardcore show with Anna and Shawna (bring earplugs this time).
4. go to Austin for a weekend.
5. go to Mexico for a weekend.
6. see the Basquiat show at the MFAH.
7. hang out with Mark more.
8. stalk the Shrub in Crawford (are you listening, NSA?)
9. figure out how to fit all this shit in my car and drive back to Pennsylvania.

eight things i can't stand about my sister:

1. the way she can't stop saying things like, "I can't wait for Marc Jacobs' spring collection".
2. her nose constantly in Vogue.
3. her fake ass smile in our holiday pictures.
4. there is no world outside of Manhattan, and if there is, it's boring and a season behind.
5. smoking because Sarah Jessica Parker did in "Sex and the City".
6. reminding me that i am fat several times over Christmas break.
7. throwing occasional 14-year-old temper tantrums.
8. constant insinuations that i, in fact, do not know anything.

seven trains of thought running through my head in the past few weeks:

1. Philadelphia. Houston. Philadelphia. Houston. Philadelphia. Lebanon? Houston. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Houston. Philadelphia.
2. should call Olive. should call John. should call Olive. should call John.
3. that fucking asshole.
4. apartments, one bedroom, two bedroom, studio, utilities, bungalow.
5. residencies, grants, fellowships, residencies, grants, studios, grants, residencies, CV, resume, slides, slides, slides!
6. that fucking bitch.
7. white houses, houses, white, white houses, shit, am i repeating myself?

six things that are worse:

1. the dirty dishes in the sink.
2. the dead cockroach in my bedroom wastecan.
3. my finances.
4. the floor of my studio (covered in clay).
5. my addiction to coca cola.
6. the coat i started to knit in November.

five things that are better:

1. the alignment of my neck.
2. my hair (cut and dyed).
3. the gas tank in my car (completely full).
4. Mexican coke (made with real sugar!).
5. porcelain.

four things i want in an apartment in Philadelphia:

1. hardwood floors.
2. heat included in the rent.
3. in Germantown, preferably within walking of Jeanine.
4. around $500 a month.

three daydreams i have recently had:

1. being not allergic to anything so i could live with Jeanine.
2. various situations where i inflict pain and violence on people i hate.
3. a one bedroom apartment in Inwood.

two possible places to move to after i leave Houston:

1. Lebanon.
2. Philadelphia.

one wish:

1. happy effing new year.